


First Blood

by athena_crikey



Series: Sleeper, Slayer, Scholar [1]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Attraction, Drama, Multi, Team-fic, Trevor can't make up his mind, Vampire Bite, Vignette, slight gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 21:12:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13062246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: Trevor makes a sacrifice to save Sypha's life. It is surprisingly pleasant.





	First Blood

Given Adrian’s cat-like movements, Trevor is somewhat surprised to discover that his four-legged form is distinctly lupine. 

All vampires wear multiple skins, even the half-breeds. Not all, however, transform into golden-eyed wolves who sit unabashedly by the roadside upon returning from cavernous scouting missions. As a wolf Adrian is large, commanding and suspiciously well-groomed, his hide a coal-black colour that shimmers in the early moonlight. His massive fangs are bone-white, his paws the size of a small bear’s. This is not, Trevor thinks, the kind of animal that would take kindly to being told to heel.

A moment later the space around him blurs, and Adrian is left standing where the wolf once was, fastidiously wiping a speck of mud from his cheek with his thumb. 

“The cave opens up some three yards in – there is space to stand. The previous occupants are now previous,” he adds, making Trevor wonder whether it was truly mud on his cheek. 

“And we’re just going to crawl in there, are we?” asks Trevor skeptically.

“The night hordes are unlikely to find us there, and two of the group require sleep.” Adrian’s tone makes it clear that he does not count himself among this number. 

“What’s the problem?” asks Sypha, dropping down onto her knees to peer inside. 

Trevor eyes her petite form, and Adrian’s long, slim body. He outweighs the both of them combined, and it shows in the bulk of his shoulders and chest. The entrance to the cave is a low hole in the side of a rocky wall, the kind of den for a fox to call home, not a man. “No problem,” he grumbles. “But you’re bringing in the supplies.”

  
***

The previous occupants of the den were in fact, as it turns out, foxes. Trevor would have happily cooked them for dinner, but lighting a fire in the cave would only serve to smoke the three of them out. Instead they eat cured meat and dried fruit scrounged from an empty village, and push the animal corpses into the back corner of the den. Their light, such as it is, is provided by two stumpy candles flickering in the centre of the space. They paint the floor in a buttery glow, but cast more shadows than they do light.

“Is your sense of smell keener as a wolf?” asks Sypha, as she pulls a strip of meat from the piece in her hand with her teeth. She doesn’t do it daintily, as Trevor imagines Adrian would – teeth delicately tearing into the cured flesh – but with unladylike gusto. He’s never travelled with a woman before, so had formed few expectations. So far Sypha has shattered all of them. 

He likes that she can surprise him.

“No,” replies Adrian, “but I travel faster.”

“Oh. I thought perhaps you could scout for us.”

“Not more efficiently. In any case, I cannot remain as a wolf indefinitely; it costs me magic, and I am loath to spare it.”

“Why?” asks Sypha. Trevor, who knows, narrows his eyes. 

“Because it must be regained in human blood.”

There’s an awkward silence. 

“It is not the Speakers’ way to shed blood,” she says, thoughtfully rather than accusatorily.

“But it is to give gifts,” replies Adrian. 

Trevor, who doesn’t like where this is going, breaks in suddenly. “Alright, there’ll be no gift-giving – or blood-giving, magic-giving, or any other kind of giving. Sypha is our mage; one is enough.”

“I do not take what is not freely given,” says Adrian softly, golden eyes fixed on Trevor as if in challenge.

“Great. I repeat: no gift-giving.”

Adrian shrugs, a smooth, graceful movement that in the flickering candlelight seems to etch itself into Trevor’s mind. “Very well. If you are confident in your own skills, so be it.”

  
***

Sypha and Adrian are near-perfect opposites, Trevor thinks, as he lies on the lumpy ground that night and tries to sleep. Beside him Sypha is already asleep; he can hear her soft sighs – not quite snores, but louder than her breathing while awake.

Adrian, sitting somewhere in the darkness waiting patiently for dawn, is totally silent. He doesn’t sleep, but he does hibernate – witness his year-long slumber beneath Gresit. Trevor knows from long lessons in the family library that vampires lie as dead when they choose to rest – no sound, no breath. No heartbeat. 

Sypha is reassuringly human – warm, stubborn, and very much alive, even in her sleep. Adrian is something other – a cold presence, separate from the world, separate from living things, with the beauty and splendor of a frozen waterfall. 

Trevor just wishes he could make up his mind as to which of them to let into his heart.

  
***

It’s a week later.

The three of them are fighting – when are they not? – in an abandoned square. They are each ringed by enemies, huge hulking demons with drake-fangs and poisoned claws. At some point in the fight the monsters managed to separate them, and they have yet to make the concerted push to join forces again. 

Trevor slashes through a demon with his sword. The blade is a new acquisition. Found at an abandoned blacksmith it didn’t have the sharpness of the old, but an evening with his whetstone and oil rags has seen it take on an edge that can slice paper cleanly. The demon screams as it falls; Trevor takes a moment to survey the landscape.

On the north side of the square, Adrian is fighting with his longsword, movements precise and clean, slain enemies huddled around his feet. To the east Sypha is alternating between burning and freezing her attackers, her eyes unwavering.

Until, directly behind her, the front of a house collapses to reveal a hulking beast, its putrid breath steaming in the cold night. It charges and catches her with its snout, tossing her into the air and trampling her underfoot when she falls. 

Trevor breaks away, leaping atop a demon and thus through the wall of enemies ringing him, knowing that it’s too late – that he is already too late – when something black shoots across the square.

Even as he sprints, slashing at monsters left and right, Trevor sees a wolf cross the bloody cobblestones in the space of a second, leaping up and sinking its fangs into the meaty throat of Sypha’s attacker. The wolf – Adrian – rips the vessels from the thing’s neck and it drops; he moves to stand over Sypha’s still form, growling long and loud. The first demon who dares take a step forward falls in a glory of flaming magic, the second has its paw sundered by the wolf’s razor-sharp teeth. 

Then Trevor is there, barrelling into the melee, slicing and hacking with a rage that knows no bounds. He cuts demons fully in half, leaving piles of gore and entrails, until they flee into the night that birthed them. 

Only then does he turn to see Adrian kneeling over Sypha, the mage’s head cradled in his once-more human-shaped arms. 

“How is she?” he asks urgently, crouching down beside them.

“She requires healing,” replies the vampire, without looking up. Usually Sypha’s skin is a delicate pink; now, beside Adrian’s pale hand her face is equally white. 

“You possess magic; heal her.” It’s not a request. 

Adrian does look up now, face tilting towards Trevor’s so that his hair slips off his shoulders in a golden stream. “I cannot – my magic is expended.”

“What do you need?” Even if it were the footsteps of a cat or the breath of a fish, he would find it. In this moment, there is nothing in the world outside her shallow, failing breaths. 

“You know the answer to that.”

Trevor looks from the vampire to the woman in his arms. Her face is wracked with pain even in unconsciousness, mouth twisted in an ugly line. Blood trickles from the corner of her lips, bright scarlet against her milk-white skin. 

“Then take it,” he replies, pulling his collar away from his throat. “Take what you need, damn you.”

Adrian gives him an unimpressed look, gaze flat. He reaches out and takes Trevor’s hand, bringing it up to his mouth. Delicate as a mouse nibbling a crumb he brushes his teeth against the inside of Trevor’s wrist. Trevor hardly feels the puncture – it’s nothing but a prickle – and then Adrian’s cool tongue is lapping against his skin. It spreads waves of heat through him for all that the vampire’s mouth is cold, sets him to sweating in the frigid night. There’s something immeasurably erotic in the bowed angle of Adrian’s head, in the way his gold eyes watch Trevor’s unblinkingly as he drinks of him, in the way his tongue sweeps wetly against Trevor’s wrist. 

He suddenly, unaccountably, wishes the vampire’s teeth were at his throat, that those lips were closer to  
his, that this heady sensation were stronger still. 

Then Adrian is withdrawing, his lips pale and bloodless as always, his eyes smug as a cat’s. He makes a complex gesture, wind suddenly whistling around his form, and presses his hands to Sypha’s chest. “ _Soul Steal_ ,” he mutters, and from the dark corners of the square gusts of magic suddenly appear, concentrating on his hands. He pushes the glowing power into Sypha, channelling it into her body. A moment later her chest rises cleanly, the sound of her breathing once again normal as the pain fades from her features. 

Adrian steps back and lets Trevor replace him at her side, holding her up off the cold cobblestones. “Sypha?”

Her eyelashes flutter, then sky-blue eyes open and she is looking up at him quizzically. “Trevor? But I … what’s happened?”

“Nothing happened. Adrian healed you. That’s all.” His tone leaves no room for questions. 

Her brow puckers, as though she doesn’t believe it, but she doesn’t contradict him. Instead she sits up, pulling her slight form out of his arms and looking around the empty square. “What of the demons?”

“They fled. Those we did not kill,” answers Adrian, standing beside them. He makes a vague motion and his sword picks itself up and returns itself to the sheath at his side. “It would be best not to remain here, however. Can you travel?”

“Of course.” She’s offended now, picking herself up and dusting herself off. “Let’s go then.”

Trevor follows her, while Adrian steps along behind. 

Leaving him trapped between them once again. 

END

**Author's Note:**

> Considering doing a short series of Trevor/Adrian/Sypha one-shots...


End file.
